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Explain a research paper in plain words

The question, the method, the results and the limits of one paper, for a reader with no background.

  • You start it: When you start it
Use in CuiarRun from your AI agent

What it does

The task

Open the paper at paper url and read all of it. Explain it for audience in 500 words or fewer: the question, the method, the main results with the key numbers, and the limits. Explain each technical term the first time you use it. Find 3 later papers on Semantic Scholar that cite it, and say if each one supports or challenges it. Send me the text with links.

  • It works in arXiv and Semantic Scholar, in the workspace you pick, and signs in with passwords from your Cuiar vault.
  • It runs once, when you start it.

What you give it

BlankWhat to giveExample
paper urlA link to the paper on arXiv, a journal site or a PDFhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01234
audienceWho will read the explanationA product manager with no machine learning background

What you get back

An example run with the example values above. Your run uses your own data.

Paper: Small models with retrieval match large models on fact questions (arXiv, 2024)

Question: can a small language model that looks up documents answer as well as a model 10 times larger?

Method: 3 model sizes, tested on 4 public question sets, with and without retrieval (the model reads matching documents first)

Result: the small model with retrieval scored 71%; the large model without it scored 69%

Limits: English only, short fact questions only, clean documents

Later papers:

  • Supports: Chen et al., 2025 (same result on medical questions)
  • Challenges: Okafor, 2025 (the gap returns on questions with several steps)
  • Supports: Varga and Lind, 2026 (same result in German)

Run it in Cuiar

  1. 01

    Open it

    Click Use in Cuiar on this page. The side panel opens with the task in the composer.

  2. 02

    Fill in 2 blanks

    Type paper url and audience. Tab moves to the next blank.

  3. 03

    Run it

    Run sends it to the agent. Follow each step in the panel, and stop it at any time.

From the terminal

cuiar exec "Open the paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01234 and read all of it. Explain it for A product manager with no machine learning background in 500 words or fewer: the question, the method, the main results with the key numbers, and the limits. Explain each technical term the first time you use it. Find 3 later papers on Semantic Scholar that cite it, and say if each one supports or challenges it. Send me the text with links."

Run it from your AI agent

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other MCP clients reach Cuiar at https://mcp.cuiar.com/mcp. Add the server one time, then ask for the task in plain words, or call run_task yourself.

1. Add Cuiar to Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http cuiar https://mcp.cuiar.com/mcp

2. Ask your agent

Use the Cuiar tool run_task to run my "Explain a research paper in plain words" template with paper url = https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01234; audience = A product manager with no machine learning background.

Setup for other agents: AI agents.

The tool call

{
  "name": "run_task",
  "arguments": {
    "task": "Open the paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01234 and read all of it. Explain it for A product manager with no machine learning background in 500 words or fewer: the question, the method, the main results with the key numbers, and the limits. Explain each technical term the first time you use it. Find 3 later papers on Semantic Scholar that cite it, and say if each one supports or challenges it. Send me the text with links."
  }
}

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